Tabbed dividers for comb or spiral wire-bound books or for loose leaf ring binders are common commodities in any office supply store. The tabs may be pre-printed with general indicia, such as numbers or letters, or may be left blank for user designation. In the latter case it is often desirable to use a computer printer to print the information on the tab. In many cases it is also desired to print material on the divider sheet itself. In either case a tabbed 8½″ wide sheet will not pass through the paper conveyance mechanism of a standard desktop type of printer, because the tab increases the width dimension beyond that which the printer will accommodate.
Dealing with the printing limitations imposed on tabbed divider sheets has been the subject of much effort that is memorialized in a number of U.S. Patents. Notable among these are U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,068,423, 6,099,189 and 6,361,639 to Owen and all of the patents cited and referred to therein by the Patentee. A somewhat similar configuration, also requiring folding and the use of adhesives, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,089,777 to Wong. The Deutschmann U.S. Pat. No. 5,954,445, and the Mangler U.S. Pat. No. 6,039,354, are also directed to apparatus and methods for creating index sheets having perforations or foldable portions defining a guide, removable guide strips on the tab edge, foldable binding sides, hinged cutouts, removable index tab portions and the like, all of which are designed to allow the index sheet to pass, in a guided or controlled fashion, through a printer.
It is apparent from the continuing effort to improve the apparatus and process related to printing index tabs and index divider sheets with a standard computer printer that a satisfactory solution has yet to be developed.
It is therefore, the primary object of the present invention to provide a simplistic, cost effective and workable solution to the inability of computer printers to print traditionally formed index tabs or index divider sheets having protruding index tabs.